The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria land on the desert planet Telos, where an
archaeological expedition from Earth has also arrived. The scientists are
searching for the fabled tombs to which the dying Cybermen removed
themselves many years earlier. The Doctor is adamant that his old enemies
be left in hibernation, but two members of the research team, the
Logicians Klieg and Kaftan, have plans to use the Cybermen to help them
dominate the galaxy.

Production

The first two Cyberman stories -- The Tenth
Planet and The Moonbase -- had proved
popular with viewers and so as production wrapped on the latter, plans
were already afoot for a third serial involving the silver giants. Their
cocreator, Kit Pedler, was commissioned on March 3rd, 1967, to write a new
adventure entitled “The Cybermen Planet”. Story editor Gerry
Davis, who had devised the Cybermen along with Pedler, envisioned this as
an opportunity to explore the background of the monsters and get away
somewhat from the “base under siege” formula used for their
previous appearances.

As with the earlier Cyberman serials, Davis worked closely with Pedler,
who had little formal experience as a writer for television. Between them,
they conceived a new type of Cyber-creature for “The Cybermen
Planet”: the Cybermats, which were modelled on silverfish and were
seen as a candidate for commercial exploitation like the Daleks before
them. The writers drew on deleted material from The
Moonbase -- untelevised dialogue would have revealed that the
Cybermen in that story came from the planet Telos, which had been
colonised prior to the destruction of Mondas in The
Tenth Planet. Telos would now be the setting for the new serial,
which by mid-April had been retitled The Tomb Of The Cybermen. For
the first time, Davis and Pedler's scripts indicated, in dialogue, the
Doctor's age. The given figure of 450 years accounted for the 650 years
noted in the 1963 character outline for the Doctor, as well the couple of
centuries which the production team felt he had shed when his body was
renewed at the end of The Tenth Planet.

The Tomb Of The Cybermen would
be a test outing for Peter Bryant as producer

Davis, meanwhile, was in the process of leaving his regular job on
Doctor Who. (Fortuitously, this meant that he could share the
writer's credit on The Tomb Of The Cybermen without risk of
violating BBC regulations.) He had been offered the opportunity to succeed
Innes Lloyd as producer but turned it down. Instead, Davis' assistant,
Peter Bryant, had been selected to replace him, with the idea being that
Bryant would eventually move into the top job when Lloyd departed.
However, Bryant had not been a producer for television before and, given
the technical complexities of Doctor Who, the BBC felt it prudent
to give him a test outing in the position. Since The Tomb Of The
Cybermen would be made at the end of the fourth recording block, it
was seen as an ideal candidate.

For three months, Bryant was temporarily appointed to producer to oversee
Serial MM. Taking his place as story editor was Bryant's assistant, Victor
Pemberton. Pemberton had been writing for radio since the early Sixties
and had also had a Doctor Who submission rejected in 1964; this was
“The Slide”, which was rewritten to remove the Doctor
Who elements and was subsequently broadcast as a radio play in 1966.
Pemberton also worked occasionally as an actor, and had played Jules on
The Moonbase. It was during this production
that Pemberton renewed his acquaintance with Bryant, a colleague from
radio, which lead to him getting the assistant story editor's job on
Doctor Who.

Although the primary plan was to hold over The Tomb Of The Cybermen
-- or “The Ice Tombs Of Telos”, as it was renamed for a short
time -- to start Season Five in September, it appears that these plans
briefly changed. In late April, a caption was prepared for the final
episode of the preceding serial in production, The
Evil Of The Daleks, suggesting that the Cyberman story would begin
transmission “Next Week”. This was never used, however, and The Evil Of The Daleks would indeed end
Doctor Who's fourth season.

It seems that Morris Barry, director of The
Moonbase, was always the man that the production office had in
mind to helm The Tomb Of The Cybermen. Immediately upon the
conclusion of work on that serial, he contacted some of the actors who had
played the Cybermen informing them that their services may be requested
for another story within a few months. Unlike the radical reinvention seen
in The Moonbase, only minor changes were made
to the design of the Cyberman costumes for The Tomb Of The
Cybermen. However, a significant addition to their ranks was the
Cyberman Controller, played by Michael Kilgarriff. His costume differed
from that of the regular Cybermen in that it lacked a chest unit and
featured a large cranial dome.

Frazer Hines flirted with Shirley Cooklin, not realising
that she was his boss' wife

On June 1st, Deborah Watling was contracted for The Tomb Of The
Cybermen, followed a week later by Frazer Hines. Meanwhile, amongst
the cast of the serial was Shirley Cooklin as Kaftan. Davis had written
the role especially for Cooklin, who at the time was married to Bryant.
Production began with location filming on June 12th at the quarry owned by
the Gerrards Cross Sand & Ballast Company at Wapseys Wood,
Buckinghamshire, which served as the surface of Telos. Hines inadvertently
embarrassed himself on this day when he began flirting with Cooklin, not
realising that she was his boss' wife.

Filming then continued indoors at the Ealing Television Film Studios for
the period spanning June 13th to 16th. Material recorded here included the
opening of the Tomb doors, the emergence of the Cybermen from their
hibernation, and various scenes involving the Cybermats. These were
constructed by Michaeljohn Harris of the BBC's visual effects department
and came in several varieties: some were radio-controlled, battery-powered
or clockwork, while others were designed simply to be pulled along on a
string and a few were not intended to be mobile at all. Unusually, the
lone TARDIS scene was also performed at Ealing, to save having to erect
the set in the studio. Some model shots were then captured on film at BBC
Television Centre on June 19th.

Following the regular scheme for Season Four, each episode of The Tomb
Of The Cybermen was taped on successive Saturdays at Lime Grove Studio
D, beginning on July 1st and concluding on July 22nd, bringing to an end
Doctor Who's fourth recording block. At this point, Lloyd returned
to the producer's chair, while Bryant shifted back to story editing.

Episode four incited controversy for the scene where fluid
spurts out of a Cyberman's innards

Pemberton, however, elected to leave Doctor Who altogether, having
decided that he preferred writing. His association with the programme
would continue with the television story Fury From
The Deep a few months later and later Doctor Who and The
Pescatons, which was released as an LP record in 1976. Pemberton also
novelised both stories for Target Books. Pemberton continued to contribute
to various television series, such as Ace Of Wands and
Timeslip before moving behind the camera, producing Fraggle
Rock. He now runs his own production company, Saffron.

Part one of The Tomb Of The Cybermen was broadcast on September
2nd, marking the start of Season Five. The following day, Head of Drama
Sydney Newman telephoned Bryant to congratulate him on his work, meaning
that Bryant's promotion to producer was virtually assured. Episode four's
transmission on September 23rd, however, incited considerable controversy
for its violent and disturbing content, particularly the scene in which
fluid spurts out of a Cyberman's innards after it has been attacked by
Toberman. On September 26th, Kit Pedler appeared on the premiere episode
of the BBC commentary programme Talkback to debate the issue.